The Aryavarth Express
Agency (New Delhi): As many as 37 ministers have been dropped from the government in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s third term, including seven with cabinet rank. Prominent figures among them are Smriti Irani, Anurag Thakur, and Narayan Rane.
In the second Modi government, Parshottam Rupala, Arjun Munda, RK Singh, and Mahendra Nath Pandey held cabinet positions but were not retained in the new Council of Ministers sworn in on Sunday. While all three Ministers with Independent Charge have been retained, out of 42 ministers of state, 30 have been dropped.
Among those not repeated are VK Singh, Faggansingh Kulaste, Ashwini Choubey, Danve Raosaheb Dadarao, Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti, Sanjeev Balyan, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Subhas Sarkar, Nisith Pramanik, Rajkumar Ranjan Singh, and Pratima Bhoumik. Additionally, Meenakshi Lekhi, Munjapara Mahendrabhai, Ajay Kumar Mishra, Kailash Choudhary, Kapil Moreshwar Patil, Bharati Pravin Pawar, Kaushal Kishore, Bhagwanth Khubha, and V. Muraleedharan have not been retained.
Bhanu Pratap Singh Verma, John Barla, Bishweswar Tudu, Bhagwat Kishanrao Karad, Devusinh Chauhan, Ajay Bhatt, A. Narayanaswamy, Som Parkash, Rameswar Teli, and Darshana Vikram Jardosh are also absent from the new Council of Ministers. Eighteen of the dropped ministers had lost the elections. L Murugan is the only Minister of State from the previous government who lost the election but has been retained as he is already a member of the Rajya Sabha.
Smriti Irani, a Cabinet Minister in both terms of the Modi government, lost the election from Amethi to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s aide Kishori Lal Sharma by a margin of over 1.69 lakh votes. Irani was HRD Minister and Textile Minister in the first term and held Women and Child Development and Minority Affairs portfolios in Modi 2.0.
Parshottam Rupala, the Minister of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry, and Dairying in the previous government, found himself in controversy due to allegedly derogatory remarks about the Kshatriya community. However, he won Gujarat’s Rajkot Lok Sabha seat with a record margin of around five lakh votes. His deputy in the Fisheries Ministry, Sanjeev Kumar Balyan, also lost his seat.
Anurag Thakur, who won for the fifth consecutive time from the Hamirpur Lok Sabha constituency, held dual charge of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports in Modi 2.0. Mahendra Nath Pandey, the Minister of Heavy Industries, was seeking a hat-trick from Chandauli but lost to Samajwadi Party’s Birendra Singh.
Raj Kumar Singh, the former Union minister for power and renewable energy, lost his seat in Bihar’s Arrah to CPI(ML)-Liberation’s Sudama Prasad by 59,808 votes. Narayan Rane, the MSME Minister, wrested the Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg Lok Sabha constituency from the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena in a prestige battle. This is the first time the BJP has won a Parliamentary seat in the coastal Konkan region, a traditional Shiv Sena stronghold.
Rajeev Chandrashekhar, who was the Minister of State for Skill Development, Electronics, IT, and Jal Shakti, lost the election from Thiruvananthapuram to sitting Congress MP Shashi Tharoor. Chandrashekhar expressed his gratitude for his 18-year public service on social media.
Former Union minister of state for sport and youth affairs Nisith Pramanik lost the Cooch Behar seat in West Bengal to TMC’s Jagadish Chandra Barma Basunia by 39,250 votes. Subhas Sarkar, the MoS Education in the Modi 2.0 government, lost the Bankura seat to Trinamool Congress’s Arup Chakraborty by 32,778 votes.